_ROD and RIVER_ is the title of a useful book about fly-fishing (it only needs "fly-leaves" for notes to make it perfect), written by a Major bearing the appropriate name of FISHER. One note he might append for the benefit of intending Etonians, that those who, not having "passed" their swimming examination, venture to go on the "river", are in danger of the "rod."
MRS. RAM was told that Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN is a giant in intellect. She said, "I don't know much about intellect, but he must be a very big giant to carry an orchard in his buttonhole."
Oh, Flora, fair Goddess of Flowers, skies brighten, the gardens are glowing, And lo! 'tis the season of Flower Shows, when everything seems "All-a-blowing!" And what the dickens you've been up to with the dictionary, I'm dashed if there's any possibility of knowing.
Talk about "Volapück." Why, it isn't a circumstance compared with the floral goddess's crack-jaw. I've been trying to read the account of a Flower Show to my wife. Now, at patter-songs I've a slick tongue and slack jaw. I can do "_John Wellington Wells_" pretty patly; but to read through a horticultural article Would give an alligator instantaneous tetanus; and of _meaning_ the words seem to have no particle. I should like to be introduced, in its Bornean home, to the glorious plant called Cælo Dyana. But fancy a footman having to announce Madame SPATHOGLOTTIS KIMBALLIANA! Odont. Uro-Skinneri _sounds_ like something medical and epidermic, but then we're informed that its sepals and petals Are "reticulated in tender brown and broad rosy-mauve," which immediately sends one "off the metals." The Masdevallias may be a respectable family, though _I_ should not care to marry into it, But "the hybrid M. Mundyana representing M. Veitchii × M. Ignea" (though "a wonderfully glowing orange" by all accounts), sounds so exceedingly mixed and mongrel that I'd certainly eschew it. "A noble Catt: Gigas" _sounds_ rather aristocratic: "Catt: Jacomb," I suppose, is a sort of a relative; But Od. Citrosmum, sounds awfully odd, and is not _my_ notion of a reassuring appellative. And what _are_ you to make of Odont. crisp. Sanderæ, which, whomsoever "Sanderæ" may be, _I_ don't want to "crisp" him; "A sport of nature unequalled" they call him, and no doubt his _name_ is, for I can neither clearly articulate, stutter or lisp him. I've not a doubt that, whoever he is, he is probably liked and considered by some a gem. Gyp. Chamberlainianum has a political sound, and has a strong savour of a floral Brummagem.